


i love it when you call my name

by Princex_N



Category: Mumintroll | Moomins Series - Tove Jansson
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Introspection, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Pining, Pre-Slash, Sad and Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-15
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2020-01-14 17:40:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18481123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princex_N/pseuds/Princex_N
Summary: It runs a little deeper now, this feeling. Like something wound tightly around his bones - something he wouldn't quite be the same without anymore.In which Snufkin considers his own feelings for Moomin.





	i love it when you call my name

**Author's Note:**

> title is from [mitski's "Strawberry blonde"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g685pAuKW34), because i'm really losing it over here
> 
>  _i picture it soft and i ache_ was the alternate title for this fic

Snufkin probably should have known better. 

Honestly, he probably  _had_ known better - he just hadn't thought through the consequences of ignoring all of that knowledge. He'd probably known from the start, from the moment he'd gotten that tight feeling in his chest for the first time, that it was a bad idea. He probably should have tried to stop everything right then and there, to keep it from getting any further. 

But he had liked the feeling a little too much to just stamp it out. 

It just feels so  _nice_ , to want, and to be wanted (even if it's not quite the same kind of 'want'). Snufkin has never had much experience with being wanted, has never really been the type of person that other people found interesting or worth putting up with. At first, it was just a novelty, the thrill of something new and exciting. It's not quite like that anymore. 

It runs a little deeper now, this feeling. Like something wound tightly around his bones - something he wouldn't quite be the same without anymore. 

Sometimes it's terrifying to think about. The threat of the loss and what it could do to him, how he's allowed himself to grow with and around it. Like a tree planted too close to a fence post, grown to envelop it, no way to free one from the other without killing the tree. Sometimes that's terrifying. Most of the time, Snufkin looks at the threat and thinks that it could only ever be worth enduring, if he could keep the soft support the rest of the time. 

The thrill of hearing Moomin say his name alone would be worth every bad thing that could possibly come of it. 

It's hard to pin down exactly when everything had happened. Part of him thinks it had happened right at the very beginning, from the first time they'd met eyes and Snufkin had invited him along, from that very first "We should love to," Snufkin had been completely lost. 

But it might have happened slower. Something built over time, through trials and adventures endured together. 

Snufkin doesn't know when it first happened, but he remembers when he had first realized it. It had been right after the first time Snufkin came back to Moominvalley. He had left the earliest he ever has, gone part way through the Fall, without regrets. He hadn't quite said goodbye and hadn't promised to come back. He had just gotten the call to leave, and he'd followed it like he always had.

When that following Spring came along, he'd started getting a new impulse - the call to  _go_ somewhere. It had never happened before, and Snufkin had been intrigued enough to try it out. 

The moment he had heard Moomin calling his name over the hills, Snufkin had known. 

Had finally understood the feeling he'd heard so many others speak about - the feeling of 'coming home'. 

It was exhilarating, it was terrifying. Snufkin never wanted to let it slip out of his grasp again, and he wanted to run from it until he had forgotten he'd ever known it in the first place. 

He had stayed. Told himself that it was for convenience over anything else, but even then he already knew he was lying.

He still doesn't say it out loud, but he doesn't bother lying about it to himself anymore - it's gone too far for that. 

He knows, of course, that it's strange. Every story people tell about this feeling ends in a pursuit, an admission, but Snufkin has always understood the odds. Moomin had met Snorkmaiden not long after he'd met Snufkin, after all, and Snufkin has been around for that the whole time. He knows that Moomin has his heart set on someone else. 

Snufkin is surprisingly okay with this. It aches, sometimes, to see them, so he doesn't stick around long when they're together, but other than that he's okay with it. As long as Moomin still calls his name like that, Snufkin is happy where he is. Snufkin will take whatever he can get, and he can be satisfied with all of it.

After all, Snufkin is used to not having things, has even learned to prefer it, sometimes. As long as Moomin is  _there_ , to see and hear and talk to and laugh with and be near, then Snufkin can be happy never quite having him to himself. 

It's already more than he had ever thought himself capable of getting. 

So, of course it's enough, it's more than enough. To have someone who is sad when he leaves - but who never tries to force him to stay - and who is excited to see him return. Who touches him so carefully and who says his name with that tone of voice. 

(Someone he would do anything for, give anything to. Someone he can return to, who he can support in every way he knows how. Snufkin would bind himself to this valley for him, would bring him every drop of water in the sea if he asked for it. He wonders if Moomin knows this.) 

He dreams of it sometimes - of pressing their noses together with steady pressure, linking their paws together and not letting go, curling close against his side during the nights. Quiet little fantasies that no one else will ever know about, indulgences into the potential for  _more_. 

But Snufkin knows better and doesn't care. It's enough, and it will always be enough, to be allowed to stay by Moomin's side in any capacity for as long as he is welcome. 

The weight of the anchor tying him there is not nearly as oppressive as he once thought it would be. He finds himself wondering, most days, how he could ever have thought of it as a bad thing at all. 

**Author's Note:**

> i've really written and posted three fics in one day; that's never happened before. god i love this series
> 
>  
> 
> [my tumblr](http://www.princex-n.tumblr.com)


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